In this episode of “5 Minutes”, Dr. Robert Svoboda explores Sankhya philosophy as the foundation of yoga and Ayurveda.

Sankhya is a darshana, a philosophy. Darshana literally means to see, so it’s a way of seeing the world. Sankhya is one of the six traditional philosophies that are mentioned in an important book called the Shraddha Darshana Sangraha and it’s mentioned in the context with yoga. So the yoga philosophy employs Sankhya though it shifts it in a particular way. Sankhya is a dualistic philosophy. According to Sankhya there are two principles in the universe. One is the principle of Purusha, which means witness consciousness, consciousness that has no limitations whatsoever.

Cannot be described. Form, has no name. It is simply that faculty of consciousness that is providing consciousness to anything in the universe that has consciousness. The other principle is called Prakriti and Prakriti represents matter, it represents everything from which the universe is constructed. And according to the original Sankhya philosophy, what these two principles do is be separate from one another, forever. But sometimes what happens is that Prakriti and Purusha come together for reasons that are debated. But when they come together, they have one of the, one of the analogies that has been employed is that it is like having a, a person who can see very well but is unable to move.

That would be the Purusha. And someone who is an able bodied individual but is blind, that would be Prakriti. So when the two of them are together, let’s say that the visually capable person who can’t move around is seated on the shoulders of the visually incapable person who can move around, then things like creation can occur. As a result, of this combination, there is the production of a variety of what are called tattvas, or thatnesses, things. And, and this is really why the word Sankhya is employed, because comes from the word Sankhyaah, which means number.

So Purusha and Prakriti are two, and then there’s these 23 other things. That includes Mahat, or Buddhi, which means a field of awareness, but that is in the context of Prakriti. And Ahamkara, which means the individual ability of people like you and me as individuals to identify themselves as individuals. Then there are the three Gunas, Sattva, which are said to be the chief characteristics of Prakriti. So they’re the chief characteristics of anything that’s created. From sattva are evolved the mind, manas, the calculating mind, the five sense organs of perception, sight, and smell, etc.

And the five sense organs of action, which are symbolized by various organs, but really indicate locomotion, manipulation, elimination, creation, or procreation, and also communication. And their principle of Rajas is activity, and the principle of Tamas creates a Tun Matra, which means what we get from our sense organs, which is a sampling of reality, and that sampling of reality encourages us to interact with the world by taking the world as being made up of five elements, which are effectively earth, water, air, space, and, fire.

So Sankhya, what has happened with yoga and further iterations of this philosophy is that Purusha and Prakriti have been, postulated to, in fact, not be two things that never can unite with one another, but rather that Prakriti herself evolved from, manifested from Purusha and eventually will return to Purusha. This permits Sankhya to be employed in a, a more adwaita sort of, reality.